Sara Rossberg

About Sara Rossberg

Sara Rossberg writes:

'John Russell Taylor once called my paintings 'rigourously conceptual',- a view, which I feel, pinpoints exactly the essence of my work. It has evolved with my full awareness of other directions modern art has taken over the last half-century and strives to find a new and valid approach to painting which moves on from the traditionally known.

Figures and heads form the basic background for a visual language where material becomes the carrier of emotional and visual symbolism. The 'human surface' is translated into layers of acrylic medium and pigment, applied in parts to extreme thickness and often of deep translucency, at times overlaid in strands or carved into: always with the aim to reveal what is underlying.

There is continuous moving in and out of reality, the impact of paint surfaces overtaking what it describes, colour often alienated and unrelated, but ultimately always bringing you back to an undeniable emotionality inherent to the subject matter. The subject itself, i.e. the person(s) depicted, is only relevant in the sense of being representative in a wider context, not in the sense of individual portraiture.

Despite frequent use of strong colour and its inevitable instant impact, the paintings remain essentially introverted and contemplative. Their language is complex and changeable, increasingly so, the larger the painting, and is not readable at one glance. There is no intended narrative, only a language of paint and association.'

Turn Right in White
2000
Acrylic on canvas, 100 x 80
Donated by the artist, 2004

Pink Ice
2001
Acrylic on canvas, 50 x 50cm
Donated by the artist, 2004